Business

5 Innovative Startups From DreamIt NYC Demo Day

DreamIt Ventures' accelerator program debuted its 15 new graduates Wednesday in New York City. The 15 startups gathered for DreamIt's Demo Day to present their projects to media companies, venture capital firms, law firms, advisors, and other investors.

The startups represented a wide range of topics, from the recreational to the supremely functional. Video games, sustainable energy optimization, e-learning, and data aggregation platforms were all part of the program, and the startup founders were happy to share their wide range of backgrounds, interests, and life stories.

DreamIt Ventures helps startups get a head start with its accelerator program, which consists of a three-month intensive workshop, during which entrepreneurs receive seed funding, coaching, lectures, and networking opportunities. The New York program is now in its third cycle, and while their programs are mostly centered in cities in the United States and Israel, Mark Wachen, DreamIt's managing director, states they are "evaluating possible expansion opportunities to other cities."

Although all 15 startups had something unique to bring to the table and distinguished themselves through creativity and ingenuity, we've culled a selection of five notables, below. You can check out all 15 startups here.

We've already heard about startups allowing you to create websites without coding. Now, GamePress lets you create video games without having to know a single line of code.

You can develop a wide variety of games on an iPad with GamePress, and pre-existing widgets facilitate the addition and customization of commands (such as jumping and running), actions (such as bouncing off a wall), or events (such as a boulder swinging back and forth during a level). You can choose from the startup's collection of templates, or even import your own images. The app, which costs $10, also features a storyboard on which you can organize the sequence of events in your games.

Users will eventually be able to publish finished games and even sell them on the iOS App Store. Users will also be able to sell their own sounds, graphics, and designs to GamePress as well, Murtaza Saadat, CEO, explains. GamePress is currently looking to raise $500,000 in order to expand the app's features.

Juan Chaparro, the CEO of Serviceful, is eager to revolutionize the way we handle home management and, with his startup, aims to do just that. Serviceful provides you with your own personal concierge and aggregates home management tasks onto one platform.

"Home ownership is great," Chaparro says, "but maintenance sucks." For $100 a month, Serviceful lets you take pictures of places in your house that need repair, analyzes the situation, and suggests the best provider for fixing the problem. The personal concierge takes care of requests and household needs by sorting through online listings and reviews and selecting the optimal service provider. This makes it unnecessary for users to sort through a sea of reviews themselves before selecting a provider, Chaparro explains.

With 13 clients under its belt at the time of writing, Mimoona is determined to help fashion designers maximize their revenue and minimize their risk by crowdfunding designs. "The need to be focused on design trends is incredibly important" for designers to survive, Arik Marmorstein, Mimoona's CEO, explains.

Mimoona functions as a crowdfunding site for designs, where designers can display models they're considering producing and allow potential buyers to pre-order the designs. If a certain number of people pre-order a design, it gets produced. The idea is to help designers save money and make more successful designs, all while receiving funding and encouraging more engagement with potential customers.

According to Marmorstein, Mimoona is the most successful crowdfunding platform in Israel, and the startup is part of DreamIt Israel, which aims to introduce Israeli startups to a U.S. market. Marmorstein states that the startup's goal is "to raise $600,000 and get 300 customers in the next 12 months."

WeDidIt combines philanthropy and technology by creating a platform on which non-profits can conduct effective fundraising. WeDitIt determined that online fundraising was the most cost-effective method, vastly superior to employing volunteers with clipboards that have to chase down pedestrians.

WeDitIt also helps non-profits gain insight on their social media performance by accumulating data over multiple platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and more. The startup can measure which social media posts were the most popular among users, and which content donors responded to the most.

Green energy solutions have been in high demand for quite some time, and Callida Energy has proposed a centrally allocated software solution to combat antiquated energy management in large buildings. Using specific data, such as building occupancy, up-to-date weather reports, and precise temperature measurements in different parts of the building, Callida Energy's software optimizes goals and strategies for efficient energy management.

On one platform, a building manager can prioritize goals, such as saving costs and improving temperature regulation, which prompts the software to create a corresponding strategy. Raphael Carty, Calliday Energy's CEO, says he was inspired to find a building management solution which was simple, could be effectively customized, and optimized output.

What do you think of DreamIt NYC's "class of 2013"? Which startup was your favorite? Let us know in the comments.

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